Don't Make Me Release The Flying Monkeys

"Sardines are not even a sometimes food."

--beowabbit

Dear Cafe Horrible,

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Just a few items today, I'll keep it quick:

1) Sorry, but you can't take last week's unsold apple pie slices, stuff them into plastic juice cups, top it with Cool Whip and call it a parfait. That isn't what a parfait is. Parfaits are layered and don't look like an angry toddler balled up his fist and ramrodded the pie into the cup.

2) I need to point out that you can't simply give a soup the name Vegetarian. The word vegetarian is a descriptor, not really a stand-alone name. The name needs to offer more information about the soup. I would suggest calling it what it actually is: Salad Bar Leftovers Soup. You can note in the next line below that it is vegetarian.

3) Could I get you to do me a wee favor? See, there's this blog I love to read called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. I really want to find a funny misuse of quotation marks to photograph and send in, but we seem to live in an area where widespread over-education makes these mistakes tragically rare and I almost never see it. Since you and I are "friends," could you maybe kick me one or two of these gems so I can contribute to this great blog? Like the chicken fingers on lettuce thing today that is called Gold Finger Salad, would be funnier if it was called Gold "Finger" Salad.

Thanks, and happy Monday!

Everyone in my office building waited excitedly for the new cafe to open on the ground floor. We were tired of shlepping several blocks to Au Bon, or the comically over-priced Zigo, or the junk food at Dunkin Donuts. It took a month longer than expected for them to secure proper licensing, but open it eventually did.

"Oooh, how nice!" I exclaimed upon first entry. And it is nice, to look at. Everything is immaculately clean. It is roomy in a way that is rare for Cambridge eateries, and the lighting and displays of upscale snacks are attractive. The polite staff looks sharp in their stylish uniforms. Too bad that's where the pluses end.

That first visit, which was their opening day, I thought maybe they were still getting their act together and didn't fault then for the vile wrapped breakfast sandwich I grabbed from under the heat lamp. It was dry throughout, the sausage patty little more than brown crust and grizzle. Still, I forgave. They were just starting up.

No more heat lamp food, I decided was the solution. Next day I ordered 2 eggs scrambled from the grill cook, and was horrified to see her splash a soup ladleful of grease onto the frying grill. Into the puddle went my eggs, stirred around so the grease formed pockets in the cooked egg. When I slid it onto a bagel, there was a trench of yellow oil in the styrofoam container. I should have stopped going that day, but inexplicably didn't.

Want to know how to fuck up a grilled cheese sandwich? Go to Cafe on Main. They'll show you how, with a single slice of American cheese cowering half-melted between two slices of gummy whole wheat Wonder Bread, squashed momentarily on the grill but not, in any real sense, cooked. That one was worthy of a blog post of its own.

The salad bar, then. Huh, not much of a selection, but the basics that I must have in a salad were there. Boring, I thought, but how bad can it be? As bad as the first olive I put in my mouth, which was OMG spoiled.

Our building manager gave me a $5 coupon to the cafe, and I rationalized that things do taste better when they're free. I glanced at the dried-up mac & cheese, the leathery heat lamp pizza curling up at the end, and opted to get a made-to-order sandwich. I watched while the man ahead of me had a sandwich of green-edged roast beef assembled on his 3rd choice of bread, the others being 86'd for the day. Because it was free thanks to the coupon, I ordered turkey and cheese.

That sandwich tasted like french kissing a dog with gingivitis. The soaking wet pressed turkey food product dampened the stale bun, which actually made it easier to bite into. I was hungry and it was late, so I pulled most of the "turkey" out and pretty much ate a damp bun with a slice of cheese in it.

I suppose you could patch together a lunch with the packaged snacks and drinks -- Terra Chips, Kashi breakfast bars, bottled green tea drinks. But it's back to Au Bon for me, with their reliably good soups and tasty baked goods. Their uniforms aren't as handsome, but someone there actually knows how to cook.

There's nothing healthy to eat in the neighborhood where I work. Not that I always opt for the healthy choice anyway, but I'd been patting myself on the back for regularly enjoying a Taco Bell Fiesta Taco Salad for lunch. If you scramble the letters of FIESTA TACO SALAD, it spells MOST DELICIOUS SALAD EVAAAAR IN THE HISTORY OF ALL SALAD (you have to use the silent letters in order to get that anagram). Salad=healthy, right?

Turns out those bad boys have 840 calories each! That's 2/3rds of a day's calorie needs for me in one fast food item! Since working in this neighborhood I've eaten about 25 of them. Whoops.

According to Taco Bell's nutrition calculator, you can lop it down to 390 calories by not eating the shell. That's more like it. But no shell?

Life is everything but fair.

I was just standing next to someone who ordered a "small tea, 7 sugars." I looked down my nose at her disapprovingly.

Then as I was walking away I remembered that I usually order a small Coke/Pepsi with my restaurant meals, which is like "small drink, 16 sugars."

*facepalm*

_{(But she still shouldn't have used the word "sugars" as a unit of measurement.)}

At the honey extraction party that pheromone and I went to yesterday (much like the one I wrote about in the food_porn community last year) the post-extraction conversation went in several wrong directions. And by "wrong" I mean:

( Sardinian Maggot Cheese -- don't read while eating )